de la Sizeranne Robert - The Pre-Raphaelite стр 15.

Finally, we find these characteristics in the work of one of their contemporaries, one of the winners of the Westminster competition 1844, who is never mentioned among the Pre-Raphaelites because he was neither a member of the Brotherhood nor one of its close friends. Working alone, he simultaneously accomplished the same reform as the Pre-Raphaelites through the same methods. I am speaking here of George Frederick Watts. He was older than most of the P.R.B., and had deplored the colourist practices of the Academy for even longer than they had. These practices are well known, and were similar in both France and England around 1850. One began by covering the canvas with bitumen and warm tones, with reddish brown, for example. Then, over this base which never truly dried since it contained bitumen, one added touches of cool tones, thereby immediately obtaining transparency and enchanting transitions. This method delighted beginners and more skilful painters alike with its ease. This devilish beauty later faded: the colours obtained from these highly thinned mixtures became muddy and dark. The reliefs, which were not supported by a sufficient thickness of colour, flattened out and receded into the canvas. The bitumen, which never hardened, lay trapped under the dried colours like water under ice and pushed its way out when subjected to changes in temperature, cracking the surface of the masterpiece. While Hunt and Millais were experimenting with painting on a plain white canvas, Watts also dared to take a course opposed to that of the misguided Academy. He decided to use only solid colours, resigning himself to the fact that he would not be able to obtain transparency rapidly and easily.

Ford Madox Brown,

An English Autumn Afternoon,

Hampstead: Landscape , 1852-1855.

Oil on canvas, 72 x 135 cm.

Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery, Birmingham.

Moreover, instead of painting over robust grounds, he used very light ones, and waited for them to dry completely so that they would behave like canvas or wood. He assumed that if these light colours re-emerged with time, they would lighten his painting instead of darkening it, which is indeed what happened. Today, none of this is a secret, but at the time when Watts, Hunt, and Millais were starting out, it took rare insight to understand it and great energy to act.[28] Finally, worried about mixing colours with different bases and producing disastrous chemical combinations, Watts had the idea of placing colours next to each other instead of layering them. For example, if he wanted to

create a reddish-yellow hue, instead of mixing red and yellow paint together he would add a touch of red next to a touch of yellow. As much as possible, he substituted juxtaposition for mixture, since beyond a certain distance they produce approximately the same effect on the eye. These processes, which the pointillists of today celebrate as new discoveries, connect Watts to the great Pre-Raphaelite school. He sought the same things as they did, original poses and strong colours, at the same time that they did, and though he was not a member of their group, its spirit was a continuous inspiration to him.

Thus, taken as a whole, from Madox Brown to Millais and from Watts to Rossetti, from the Westminster cartoons to The Last of England, from Isabella and Lorenzo to the Huguenot, and from The Annunciation to Dantes Dream, the 1850 movement was the following: new men, seeking a new art, substituting curious, individual, novel poses for banal and generalising ones, and strong colour applied without underpainting, glittering with juxtapositions, for fluid colour reinforced by superpositions. In short, expressive lines instead of decorative ones and bright colours instead of warm ones. This, put simply, is what Pre-Raphaelitism was. And the rest is only mincing words.[29]

But there is a residue of truth that to be found in the depths of the Pre-Raphaelite theories, and this precipitate that remains in the still used for the analysis, after the concepts of high aesthetics have disappeared in smoke, should not be disregarded. To seek, as in the details of a Meissonier, precise movements instead of vague movements, and achieve, as through the extravagant imagination of Gustave Doré, expressive forms instead of purely decorative ones, is a great step, and this is exactly the step that needed to be taken in 1850. When generalisation reigns supreme in academic art, in a school, this school is lost; it becomes necessary, through some process, to undo the bundle of rules, throw away the stereotypes, break the moulds, chase away the models who strike poses like Jupiter thundering or Venus emerging from the sea of their own accord, and mix up all of the pompous lines that express no particular attitude, but only a state of the body and the spirit applied to an entire set of ideas and feelings, because in this case mere skilfulness is taught instead of careful study, and the student is led to the result without understanding the means.